Google to release its Internet browser today

Search firm takes shot at Microsoft's dominance in field

Verne Kopytoff, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Photo: Kimberly White, REUTERS

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Google's Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, introduces the company's new web browser, dubbed Google Chrome, during a news conference at the company's headquarters in Mountain View on Tuesday.

Google's Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, introduces the company's new web browser, dubbed Google Chrome, during a news conference at the company's headquarters in Mountain View on Tuesday.

The new browser, called Google Chrome, aims to reduce the frequency of crashed Web pages due to software errors, add extra protection against malicious sites that spread online viruses and be more compatible with the latest software used on Web pages, according to the company.

Google's browser is open source, meaning Internet users are invited to add to the underlying software code to improve its performance and expand its capabilities.

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A test version of the free browser will be available for download sometime this afternoon at www.google.com/chrome.

In a post on Google's corporate blog Monday, Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director, explained Google's entry into the browser arena by saying, "We believe we can add value for users and, at the same time, help drive innovation on the Web."

Google, in Mountain View, has long butted heads with Microsoft online in areas like search and online advertising, but it is increasingly encroaching in desktop software, including word processing and spreadsheets. In releasing a browser, Google is going after one of the few areas in which Microsoft is an online leader, with a 72.2 percent market share, according to Net Applications, a software maker that tracks browser use.

But Microsoft's dominance has been eroding in the face of a stiff challenge from Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox browser, which has gained a market share of 19.7 percent. Like Google's browser, Firefox, owned by the Mozilla Foundation, is open to editing by outside programmers.

Google has long supported the Mozilla browser and serves as its default search engine. Last week, Google extended the partnership, which involves Google sharing online advertising revenue with Mozilla, until 2011.

John Lilly, Mozilla's chief executive, said that Google Chrome offers more competition for Firefox, but doesn't affect Mozilla's deal with Google.

Just last week, Microsoft released the latest version of Internet Explorer, IE8 Beta 2, with the final version of IE8 to be available perhaps by the end of the year. IE8, in its current form, poses a challenge to Google because it allows users to hide some of their online behavior from advertisers, including those who buy ads from Google.

Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of Internet Explorer, said of Google's entry: "The browser landscape is highly competitive, but people will choose Internet Explorer 8 for the way it puts the services they want right at their fingertips, respects their personal choices about how they want to browse and, more than any other browsing technology, puts them in control of their personal data online."

Google's challenge with Chrome will be to get users to download it, despite the advantage Microsoft has with Explorer coming already loaded on new computers.

Chrome will be available only for Windows systems at first, but Google is working on versions for Apple and Linux users.

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